I really should play more / Lockdown Day 482

I'm still reading Brené Brown's book, The Gifts of Imperfection, given to me as a birthday gift from my son, almost a year ago. It's not that the book is a difficult read - on the contrary, it's probably something you could read in a day - it's that I don't read enough. With my wool craft, I tend to sit down and watch movies/series, while knitting or crocheting. It's like losing myself in another world, after a day of dealing with life's peculiarities.  It's strange, because I love reading and whenever I do, I think about the fact that I could be doing so much more of it. 

I also have a problem in that I tend to be reading three books at the same time. Hmmmmm.... 

Anyway....  the chapter I started with, this morning, is entitled "Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth". Wow! She talks about the importance of playing, just for the sake of it - to have fun, to do the opposite of what we think adults should always be doing, namely, achieving or succeeding. Interesting. 

I can relate to that. How many times have I said things like, "I wish I had more hours in a day", or "Life is so hectic!" It becomes a habit to say those things and to keep living that way, without realising we have a choice. You can break your day up into sections and start by controlling the parts that you can. Eventually, you can get even the crazy parts of the day to become less crazy. You can. And if you've tried everything and it still doesn't work, it might be time to place yourself in a new context.   

Something I've learnt about myself is that I'm really not interested in competing. If I'm in a group and a number of people are being loud and talkative, I become even quieter. I actually hate competitions. I would never enter a talent competition - not because I'm scared I'd lose, because it just feels so arbitrary and so dependent on the opinions of a handful of people, each with their own agenda (and ego). I actually hate all the television shows that turn everything into a competition, like cooking and designing, or whatever else they take the fun out of. My favourite cooking shows are the ones with Nadiya Hussain. She's delightful. And she has fun. I feel inspired and uplifted when I watch her. She makes me believe I can do anything I put my mind to. 

I've often been called an idealist, so I've often referred to myself in that way, too. The reason is that I don't aspire to what many others think one should aspire to. And they always have suggestions for what you should be doing with your skills, talents or interests. How about letting me choose? If I'm building up my fitness by running, why can't I run just because it makes me happy? If I play guitar and sing, why do I have to enter a competition for other people to tell me I am or am not good enough? Why can't we do things just for fun? I believe that's called playing. 

I think that being involved in the music world parallel to my full-time job was what enabled me to cope with the stress that I encountered in the workplace. I felt this when I was teaching, as well as in my current job, in corporate philanthropy. I also found it worked for me to compartmentalise - to keep the two parts of my life separate. Every now and then, the two worlds would intersect, but that was rare. It worked for me to keep them apart. I feel like my music identity is linked to something magical, which I don't want my day job to diminish in any way.   

Oh, I've just seen the message written at the beginning of the book, by Nick:

To my mother

for teaching me

the first songs I ever learnt

so that I could write mine 

and also for writing her own  

                                                             Thank you, Nick. ❤